The Dokdo inscription is inextricably tied to the dispute over sovereignty of Dokdo. Therefore, the Korean government has made the utmost effort to promote the single, unified inscription of the islets as Dokdo.

Under the circumstances, the Korean government has actively campaigned to establish the single inscription of the islets as Dokdo by correcting foreign map producers and media who use both Dokdo and Takeshima when identifying the islets out of either the lack of information or the lack of understanding of the Dokdo matter.

The body of water that Koreans have called the East Sea (“Donghae” in Korean) for the past 2000 years is widely known as the Sea of Japan to most other countries.

That name has stood mainly because during the early 20th century when the work of setting standard geographical names was in progress, Korea was unable to participate in the decision-making process since it was under Japanese colonial rule. Japan’s seizure of the Korean sovereignty and its rising international status at that time greatly influenced the mindset of the mapmakers of the Western world.

Although the inappropriate description of this sea has been widely accepted by the international community, it has never been recognized by Koreans. Further, the Korean government has made a strong case for the legitimacy of the name East Sea at international conferences such as the UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. It has also urged private and public organizations including governments, international agencies, map makers, and media to use the name East Sea.

The Northeast Asian History Foundation will aim to support the government in its efforts to resolve this matter in a systematic and effective way with the help of the private sector.

East Sea has been the recognized name for the waters in question for 2,000 years. As indicated in the book Samguksagi (History of the Three Kingdoms), the first known use of the name East Sea was in 37 B.C., predating the national name Japan, which was first put into official use in the 8th century, by some 700 years.

That being said, since the sea itself is bordered by four countries (South and North Koreas, Japan and Russia), there is a clear need to agree on a name that is acceptable to the neighboring nations. If the nations involved fail to arrive at a consensus, it is recommended that both names appear concurrently. In the case of conflicts over geographical names, the UN conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names recommends concurrent use of both names for the timebeing.

Furthermore, it has long been general practice to decide on maritime geographical names based on names of continents located on the left side. Korea’s claim is that East Sea identifies it as the sea to the east of the Eurasian continent, not only the Korean peninsula.

The term Sea of Japan is widely recognized by the international community and some 95% of world maps have adopted that name. Changing the name of the sea could cause unnecessary confusion.

The name Sea of Japan was established during the late 18th to early 19th century by the Western world. It has been said that Japan used its growing diplomatic clout to force the use of this term in the late 19th century in what was a successful effort to broadly establish the name Sea of Japan in the international community. Therefore the issue is irrelevant to Japanese colonial rule.

The name Sea of Japan came from geographical features of the area
Since the Japanese archipelago separates this sea from the Pacific Ocean, the waters in question are rightly called the Sea of Japan and the term does not imply that Japan holds any claim on the sea.

The Korean government’s ultimate goal is to persuade the international community to recognize the name East Sea as the official, historically proper English nomenclature for the sea area in question.

At the moment, however, there are some situations where the use of only the name East Sea on its own is not feasible. In those situations, the Korean government supports the concurrent use of both names in accordance with applicable international standardization rules.

The Korean government has made steady efforts to raise international awareness on this issue and push for negotiations, while taking the long view.

Over the last decade, the government’s efforts to restore the historically proper name have begun to yield some encouraging results: more and more mapmakers and publishers worldwide are identifying the sea concurrently as East Sea / Sea of Japan.

It was in the early 16th century that the sea area between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago began to appear on world maps following worldwide voyages of discovery.

From the 16th to the early 19th century, Westerners used various names for this sea, including Sea of Joseon, Sea of Korea, Eastern Sea, Oriental Sea, Sea of China, and Sea of Japan, but the name used most frequently was undoubtedly Sea of Korea.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, however, the name Sea of Japan began to appear as often as Sea of Korea, and, beginning in the late 19th century, the former started to gain wider acceptance. Since the early 20th century, the name Sea of Japan has been used for the most part on world maps and in publications.

The nautical chart which Jean François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, a French explorer and naval officer, published in 1797 after his marine expedition to Korea, Japan, and Russia (Sakhalin), and another map of the Pacific drawn by John Arrowsmith in 1798, identified the sea in question as Sea of Japan. After that, the name Sea of Korea appeared less frequently.

Since the late 19th century, most maps have used the name Sea of Japan. When the Russo-Japanese War broke out, major newspapers around the world used that name in their articles and since the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, it has become the most widely accepted name for the sea.

The first recorded use of the name East Sea can be tracked back to a description of King Dongmyeong of the Goguryeo Kingdom in Samguksagi (History of Three Kingdoms), Korea’s oldest history book. Samguksagi contains 13 poems that refer to the East Sea, and Samgukyusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), has 15.

One of Korea’s oldest atlases, Sinjeung-donggukyeojiseungnam (Newly Expanded Survey of the Geography of Korea, 1530) includes maps of Gyeongsang, Hamgyeong, and Gangwon provinces which clearly refer to the sea as Great Sea of the Lower East (Dongjeodaehae).

The oldest known map among those that use the exact name East Sea (Donghae) is the Map of Yeongnam, which Joseon’s Border Defense Council (Bibyeonsa) produced in the late 1740s.

The name Sea of Japan first appeared in 1602 in a map called Mappamondo (Complete Map of the World) drawn by Matteo Ricci, the Italian Catholic missionary who was based in Beijing.

The United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (UNCSGN) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) are the two international organizations which provide applicable guidelines when two or more countries sharing a geographical feature do not agree on a common name.

UNCSGN Resolution III/20 (1977),
Recommends that when a geographical feature is under the sovereignty of more than one country or is divided among two or more countries and the countries sharing a given geographical feature do not succeed in agreeing on a common name, it should be a general rule of international cartography that the name used by each of the countries concerned will be accepted.

IHO Technical Resolution A 4.2.6 (1974),
Recommends that in a situation where two or more countries share a given geographical feature (such as, for example, a bay, strait, channel or archipelago) and use different name forms, they should endeavor to reach agreement to affix a single name to the feature concerned. If they have different official languages and cannot agree on a common name form, it is recommended that the name forms of each of the languages in question should be accepted for charts and publications unless technical reasons prevent this practice on small single charts, e.g. English Channel/La Manche.